


Lemon Ice

by Brighid



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M, Plot What Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hmm. Jim & Blair eat ... ices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lemon Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Things got hot on SENAD, so alyjude started chucking ices around, and things got out of hand and plot bunnies bounded up. This is fluff, I'm afraid. The PG is for some swearing. 
> 
> This story is for alyjude, muse-gooser, for Beth H. who is always good to hear from, and Francesca who is awesome, who raises great questions from the sulphur seat and writes like a dream. Yeah, _that_ kind of dream. = )

## Lemon Ice

by Brighid

Author's disclaimer: Not mine. Although, as the heat and humidity are rising, I'd gladly steal their ices...! No profit. 

* * *

Lemon Ice 

by Brighid 

The afternoon sun radiating up off the fairground tarmac was slowly frying Jim Ellison's overtired brain. Somewhere between him waking up and thinking "ah, Saturday, thank frigging GOD for Saturday!" and his planned trip to Home Depot, his body had been hijacked by Sandburg. 

Not that he really had a problem with his body being hijacked by Sandburg. Parts of him, truth be told, were pretty damned interested in the prospect. But the hijacking he had in mind usually involved the loft, a bed, and some of that grapeseed massage oil blend Blair liked to mix up for the occasional girlfriend. Since Blair seemed only to be mixing his particular massage blend cum love philtre for _girl_ friends, such a hijacking didn't seem likely. Instead, it took the form of Cascade Fair on a blood-hot day in late June, with Blair leading him from one carney game to another and then making him stand in line for a bunch of lame-ass rides. 

Like the Tilt-o-Hurl. 

Which, judging by the general ambience, had happened at least once or twice already that day. He just shook his head at the ticket-taker, an utterly bored and very pierced teen, steered Blair past the ride and led him on towards the Log Ride. Getting soaking wet at this point seemed a pretty good idea, since he'd already sweated through his T-shirt and his shorts were clinging uncomfortably in tender places. He felt the faint, cool spray of the ride's water, and leaned almost longingly towards it even as Blair tried to maneuver them back to the Tilt-o-Whirl. 

"Jeee-sus, Jim. The Log Ride sucks!" Blair said, stopping, keeping Jim from the siren song promise of three minutes of cool. 

"Forget it, Chief. We're going on the Log Ride. I'm hot, I'm tired, I blew fourteen bucks on a goddamned banana pen, and if _I_ couldn't win anything more than that, you know the freaking thing's rigged, and basically, I just want to be cool for two freaking minutes before I start to bake again!" he said, jaw set, ignoring the younger man's longing looks back at his preferred ride. 

"But Jim," Blair protested, and Jim flinched, because he could hear, he could just freaking _hear_ it coming. "I always went on the Tilt-o-Whirl with Naomi, whenever we hit a fair! It's like, a _tradition_ , man!" He'd stopped dead in front of Jim, and damn it all, he was doing that big-eyed thing. 

Jim sighed in disgust, wheeled around, and headed back to the Tilt-o-Whirl line-up with his partner. "Your family traditions, might I remind you, are notoriously weird, and include things like boiled tongue and transcendental meditation and the chronic misuse of sage." Blair just smiled at him, and the heat inside Jim ratcheted up to match the external heat, and he wondered if someone from Ripley's might be handy, because he thought, just thought that spontaneous combustion might be a real possibility. 

)0( 

Someone puked on the Tilt-o-Whirl half-way through their turn, and Jim came pretty damned close to doing it himself when the rancid hotdog and popcorn stink hit him mid-spin, his control over smell temporarily gone as he tried to counter the visual over-stimulation from the ride. To his credit, Blair noticed the older man's gulp and swallow and had popped gum in his mouth so fast that a rather nasty incident was avoided. 

He was even pretty contrite when they got off. "Hey, man. Guess maybe I oughta save that one for Naomi, huh?" 

"Ya think?" Jim said drily, but he reached over and tugged Blair's ponytail, and even smiled at him. "Log Ride?" he said hopefully. 

Blair smiled at him and shook his head. "Something even better," Blair said, and then would say no more, choosing instead to hare off in some completely opposite, utterly sweltering direction. Jim allowed himself one more wistful lean towards the faint mist he could feel, even at this distance, and then took after his partner. 

He found him in front of a grotty little building that looked about a hundred years old and was vibrating oddly. It had an open counter, from which Jim could feel a blast of blessedly cold air. He glanced up, read the sign: Flavoured Ices, Italian Sodas. He felt himself smiling. Yeah, trust Sandburg to know where to score the good shit. So to speak. 

"Your treat," he said. "I'm supposed to be at the Home Depot today. The air conditioned Home Depot." But he was still smiling, mostly because Blair was smiling at him, and at the skinny 12-year old working the counter, and the whole damned world. 

"Hey, hey, that's cool," Blair said, and his smile got even bigger as he caught his own pun. "Very cool. And I think my budget can stretch to a little ice. What flavour?" he asked, fishing into his pocket for his wallet. 

Jim leaned in, scanned the syrups available. "Lot more flavours than there used to be when I was a kid, Chief," he said, whistling low as he parsed the forty-odd available taste sensations. 

"Yeah, but triceratops isn't available anymore, so it's a trade-off," Blair quipped. Jim didn't even stop reading, simply reached around and head locked him, quickly and efficiently and with maximum armpit. 

"Laugh it up, fuzz ball," Jim said to Blair, and then politely ordered a blackberry ice from the kid, who was grinning so big at their antics that the afternoon sun almost sparkled on her orthodontics. "And he'll have lemon." He reached over with his free hand, plucked Sandburg's wallet out of his grasp, and paid the girl. Only when their cups of shaved ice and syrup were ready did he set his squirming, protesting prisoner free. 

"Hey!" Blair sputtered. "Hey! One, don't pull that Neanderthal crap with me and then _not_ expect dinosaur cracks! And two, how the hell did you know I wanted lemon? Maybe I was aiming for mango, or green tea, or something...!" Nevertheless, he was spooning up a layer, sliding it onto his tongue, making little happy noises as the cold overtook him. 

The look, the sound, drove a spike through Jim more intense than the cold-hot burn of the ice on his tongue. He swallowed hard, forced himself to look away, to breathe easy. "Yeah, well. You're always trying adventurous, out-there crap. Maybe it's time you tried something a little more basic, down-to-earth. Do you a world of good." 

Blair just rolled his eyes up and kept eating. 

Together they meandered until they reached the small stand of trees and benches at the edge of the fairground. Jim bypassed a bench, found a relatively cool spot in the sparse shade of the trees. "So, what made you want to spend a rare day off here, baking our brains out and spending our money on banana pens and vomit-machines?" Jim asked at last, when the ices had begun to work their thermostatic magic. 

Blair shrugged. "Saw the flyers, got nostalgic. No matter where we were, there was always a fair of some sort. It's like a family day kinda thing." He shrugged. "Haven't had one in awhile." He pushed the spoon around, crunching the last of the ice, mixing the dregs of syrup in. "Lemon isn't bad," he said at last, sounding just a little surprised. "Like brain-freeze lemonade." 

Jim laughed. "Pays to listen to your elders, eh? And all it cost you was some shallow breathing!" 

Blair glanced up at him, and there was a weird, wild gleam in his eye. "I still owe you for that headlock, big guy," he said softly. He glanced speculatively from his glass to Jim, and somehow, in the same moment as Jim realized Blair's intent, the younger man acted on it, dumping the last of his ice over Jim's head. 

"Still wanna go on the Log Ride, Jim? Or did that cool you off enough?" Blair said, and Jim just stared at him in stunned, almost horrified disbelief until he had to blink the sting of lemon syrup out of his eyes. 

"You fucking shit," Jim said, but there was just a hint of surprise and even a sort of flabbergasted awe in it. "You fucking _shit_ , Sandburg," he said again, and then they were both laughing, because it was a Saturday and a family day, and damn, maybe it was sticky but the ice felt good as it slid over his skin. "I oughta make you lick me clean," Jim said, mid-laugh, only to pull himself up short, reminding himself _where_ the hell he was and _who_ the fuck he was talking to. 

But Blair just tilted his head a little to the side, his eyes bright on Jim's face. "Think so?" Blair said softly, and then he leaned in, and his tongue was soft and warm, blazingly warm in contrast to the slush sliding down Jim's chin, his collarbone, the side of his jaw, the curl of his ear, the line of his brow, the tip of his nose, his mouth, oh, his jesusCHRIST, mouth. 

And then Blair was leaning back, looking at him very seriously, and Jim was trying to remember how to breathe and wondering how the hell they could get back to the truck and get today's proper sort of hijacking into action, the one that involved the loft and the bed and the grapeseed oil, since he didn't think he'd be able to walk for about, oh, an hour or two. Maybe three. Not in the damned shorts he'd picked out that morning. 

_SHIT_

But in the very best possible way. 

"You've been watching me," Blair said, and everything but the trees and the grass and Blair just sort of disappeared for Jim. "Touching me, too, man. I am," he said, and he leaned in conspiratorially close, "an expert observer of human interactions. So tell me, did I observe right?" 

All Jim could do was nod, helplessly, hopefully. Blair grinned at him, a big-toothed wolf's grin. "Good." He glanced around, briefly, and then leaned in, licked Jim broadly over his cheek, onto his lips. "You know, Jim? You were right. Lemon really hits the spot." 

Jim sighed, leaned into his guide, kissed him hard. Well, now he'd probably spend the next fifty years getting a boner every time he used the lemon wood polish, but hell, in light of everything else, it seemed pretty damned okay. 

"Still want to go on the Log Ride, Jim?" and Blair made it sound like a come-on, which apparently, alleluia, amen, it was. 

Jim managed to reach into his pocket and pull out their last few tickets. "How many rides will this get me?" he asked hoarsely, and Blair just grinned at him. 

"A lifetime's worth, man." He reached out, brushed a quick hand over Jim's crotch. "And hey, boy, you meet the size requirement!" 

Jim looked at him blankly. 

"You know," Blair said, shaking his head at the older man's obtuseness. "You must be at least _this_ big to go on this ride?" He made a rude hand gesture and wiggled his eyebrows lasciviously. 

Jim flopped back into the grass, and just laughed until he was breathless and dizzy, and felt really, really happy. 

An End 


End file.
